Tech Toys: Guide to streaming players and intelligent TVs

In a initial of a holiday present guides, we take a demeanour during home entertainment.

Look in a Weekend Extra, where we teamed adult with a humanities editor Francois Marchand to review video streaming options.

In this week’s tech toys, we try out a new winding TV and demeanour during some options for adding streaming party to your home system.

Let’s start with set tip boxes and other gadgets that let we tide calm to your TV, even it’s not a intelligent one.

Google Chromecast 2

Google Chromecast

There are a series of options here and it’s not a box of good, better, best — yet maybe that best fits your budget. You can entrance not usually movies, TV shows and other video party yet games and song as well, yet spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars to buy a new intelligent TV. Drop $45 on Google’s newest Chromecast, block it into a HDMI pier on your HDTV and this small charming puck will broach streaming video and audio media. To work it, we need an app on your Android or iOS mobile device, or run it by your PC, Mac or Chromebook. There’s no onscreen interface nor does it have controls on a device. However, it gives we entrance to a prolonged list of apps and services, including Shomi, Netflix and many others.

Roku 3

Roku 3Wendy Nordvik-Carr / Vancouver Sun

Roku has supposing foe to Apple TV in a set tip box dialect and during $110, a Roku 3 has a series of facilities that make it a good choice, generally in this cost range. It has an updated remote over a Roku 2. You can entrance all from Netflix, to YouTube to song services. It has a voice-activated hunt and we can hunt for calm — all from film titles to actors — opposite all apps. Plus we can now block a span of headphones into a jack on a remote so we can blast song or lay adult late examination zombie cinema yet gripping everybody else awake.

Apple TV

Apple TVNICK PROCAYLO / PNG

Apple TV has been around for a while yet now there’s a new one, a recently-released fourth era Apple TV. The newest one looks really many like a prototype yet Apple TV has undergone a series of changes, many particularly a new handling system, tvOS. Also poignant for fans of mobile games, developers will be means to change gaming apps created for a iPad and iPhone onto Apple TV. The remote has been totally revamped to double as a diversion controller. Its potion hold aspect lets we flip by cinema — a same kind of scrolling, selecting and navigating that we’ve turn accustomed to on a hold screens. And it comes with Siri, Apple’s voice assistant. Siri lets we hunt opposite countless apps and we can also ask her ubiquitous questions, like “find a comedy.” The new Apple TV doesn’t support 4K. The third era Apple TV is still available, it’s $89. The new one is $199 for 32GB and $269 for 64GB.

Samsung 4K Curved SUHD TV

Samsung SUHD TV curvedBEN NELMS / THE CANADIAN PRESS

I have a 1080p, 55-inch HDTV, so when we had a possibility to try out Samsung’s 65-inch winding SUHD TV, it was a conspicuous difference. After examination it for a while, we motionless winding is a new black when it comes to TVs. That immersive feeling was also helped by a fact a Samsung was a improved fit for a room. The stretch of TV suggested for several distances might be surprising. The best observation stretch for a 55-inch TV is about five-and-a-half feet (more or less, depending on that stretch calculator we use, that’s according to THX) and we don’t lay that tighten to it. What we did find yet was that sitting with an pointed perspective from possibly side, a design remained improved during a edges than observation on a prosaic screen. UHD stands for Ultra High Definition. SUHD isn’t Super Ultra High Definition yet rather a S is an identifier, only like a S in Samsung’s Gear S2 watch. For all a size, a winding SUHD is slim and superb and instead of carrying a lot of inputs on a TV itself, it uses Samsung’s One Connect box that plugs into a TV. The One Connect box has all a inputs. It can be tucked divided and we don’t stand around a behind of a TV to block things in.

Plex

PlexVideo image / Vancouver Sun

Not a streaming apparatus yet a useful apparatus for accessing a media we own, either a movies, TV shows, photographs or other items. It’s like carrying your possess personal cloud where we can keep everything, accessing it from your mobile device or mechanism yet carrying to overkill your device with files. It’s a freemium model, with a giveaway chronicle and a reward chronicle during $5US a month, $40 a year or $150 for a lifetime pass. It works with a new Apple TV, Roku and other streaming devices. Find it during plex.tv Find it during plex.tv

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